Rep. Allen West suggested late Monday that Mitt Romney re-evaluate his campaign advisers, hours after top Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom said on TV that the individual mandate of President Barack Obama’s health care law is not a tax.

“It’s a tax,” the Florida Republican told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. “I think that the governor probably needs to look at who he has within his circle of advisers, and probably get … them to provide the right type of counsel and advice.”

After the Supreme Court ruled last week to uphold the Affordable Care Act, saying Congress has the power to make most Americans buy health insurance through its authority to tax, Republicans have accused Obama of lying about whether the Affordable Care Act would impose taxes on Americans.

The administration has since said the individual mandate constitutes a penalty, not a tax — but Republicans on Capitol Hill have seized on the language of the high court’s majority opinion in arguing that it’s a tax that should be repealed.

Romney himself is campaigning on a promise to repeal Obama’s signature first-term accomplishment, and Fehrnstrom’s comment on Monday that his boss doesn’t consider the individual mandate a tax raised eyebrows among Republicans.

West, warning that the country’s sovereignty has been threatened by Congress’s “unlimited taxing authority,” suggested that Romney would be mistaken to believe that the mandate is not a tax.

“Gov. Romney needs to understand … the precedent that it now establishes whereby the federal government can, as I said, mandate a certain type of behavior or mandate a certain type of action and they can actually tax you … for your inactions,” the congressman said. “I think that’s the incredible thing that we must all understand.”

He added, “I believe that President Obama has been misleading and actually probably lying to the American people.”